“La Renaissance de l’Afrique”

I never expected to be inconspicuous. A personal motorcade, however, was not exactly what I had anticipated, either. The basic equation, as far as taxi drivers are concerned, seems to be: white + within 20 feet of street = must be in desperate need of a cab. Ever helpful, the drivers almost without exception honk their horns loudly and repeatedly as they pass in order to signal their availability to fill this critical desire. When envisioning this situation, it is also important to note that taxis constitute, at a conservative estimate, between one in four and one in three of the vehicles on the crowded streets. I’ll also add that most places there are no sidewalks – forget twenty feet; most of the time I’m walking in the road, or along the packed dirt strewn from the piles on either side. There are also no crosswalks and few traffic signals save a few scattered roundabouts. Good thing, then, that my pedestrian strategies are almost as aggressive as the taxi drivers’ car horn fingers.
That was one advantage to going running Saturday morning: for once, the drivers seemed to be able to work out that I wasn’t interested in their services. The word “morning,” however, deserves a bit of a caveat, or at least a memo to my personal file of life wisdom. Dear self: morning does not automatically occur right after I wake up. It is, in fact, a fixed time of day. Leaving the house at eleven a.m., even if I just got out of bed, will not lead to effective evasion of the most brutal heat of noontime.
The fact that one of the only people out on the street was man sprawled face-down in one of the few tiny patches of shade near the beginning of my route should have tipped me off. By that time, though, I had fully psychologically committed to going further and faster than I’ve tried here yet. The view only gets better – and, miraculously, it wasn’t until about three quarters of the way through that I truly felt like my imminent collapse due to heat, humidity, and ambitious pacing was a real possibility. It was also about then that the taxis started honking at me again, with even more exuberance than usual. I did not take the indication that I looked like I needed a cab that badly as a promising sign.
By the time I made it back to the house – on my own power, thank you very much – my brain was hazy with blissful images of a cool shower. Given the circumstance, then, I think I can be at least partially forgiven my immediate response to my next adventure, which was, essentially: Wait, what do you mean “il n’y a pas de l’eau?” I didn’t say it, at least, but I’m sure my horror showed plainly on my face as my thought process went approximately like: Because if you actually mean that there’s no water, then there’s no flushing toilet, no beverages, no washing hands, no shower. This is going to be very seriously detrimental to my happiness in the immediate future. I felt like I had a fever from the heat sunk in my skin even through the liberal coat of sticky SPF 70+ and the sweat slicking my body, and my ankles itched from the sand rimming my socks. And I had arranged to meet people in about a half hour, having planned, well… saying that I had planned to be at a reasonable level of personal hygiene would give the erroneous impression that I had put any thought at all into the possibility that I might not be able to take a shower precisely when I desired to do so. And here I had been feeling accomplished for having hammered out a life equilibrium regarding inconsistent internet and nonexistent air conditioning. I called one of my nearer neighbors in the program to see if I could use her bathing facilities, and discovered that none of Mermoz seemed to have running water, for, as far as her host family was concerned, the foreseeable future. I am ashamed to admit that I spent the next approximately three minutes in a state of abject and immobile glumness, standing by the door to my room, shower articles and phone in hand, the humidity weighing so hard on my chest that I felt I could barely breathe, making none-too-gracious mental commentary in the vague direction of my family going about life in a place where autumn exists and my friends ensconced in universities with consistently functional facilities or on cushy European study abroad excursions. At least, though, I can say for myself that this was only about three minutes. I then activated the more productive parts of my brain enough to use my precious supply of drinking water: one and a half 1.5 liter bottles, enough to shampoo but not condition my hair and scrub my body once over with soap, after which I tripped off, giddy with the feeling of having conquered circumstance and my own discontents.
And, aside from demonstrating yet again just how little I have previously been psychologically prepared to go without amenities that are really fairly complex, this little experience was a reminder of the stark power of money. Sure, I was quite irritated that I had to pour the bottled water I had inconvenienced myself to acquire down the drain and would have to buy more than that for which I had counted on paying, but the fact remains that, as long as there is water to be purchased in Dakar, I will be able to get it, barring some sort of cash card-related disaster. Yes, I hit the rock bottom of pouring water over my head with one awkwardly angled hand while I tried to kneed shampoo into my hair with the other, but it’s also true that my rock bottom is wherever my finances can float me – which is quite high, considering that just the contents of my room might well be able to buy most of my host family’s house. My having no water is very different from them having no water, because, whatever happens, I will have water one way or another, even if it’s not precisely where and when I’d like it to be.
Indeed, it’s for the same reason that I was later able to make my indignant way to the gas station to purchase enough bottles to quench my thirst and semi-adequately attend to my standards of cleanliness that the taxi drivers honked at me all the way there. More than one local companion has explicitly told me that, here, white skin means money. And, in my case, that’s an accurate assessment. I am coming to realize that, as an upper middle class American, I simply do not experience things in the same way that people here do. As I mentioned briefly in a previous post, I expect different things from my world – but I can also get different things for myself, and that sets my experience apart from a “real” one physically as well as psychologically. Sure, I watch my spending fairly carefully, both here and at home, but that doesn’t mean that I would ever think to, say, not use the top setting on the living room fan to save electricity charges, as my host family does. I’ve always considered myself and my family in the U.S. reasonably thrifty with regards to everything except basic needs – we don’t splurge on vacations or restaurants or entertainment. The thing is that “basic needs” is not so fixed a category as it has habitually been in my head. It sounds ridiculous to say that I’m only realizing this now – and I’m not, conceptually. There’s just a big difference between reading journal articles and viscerally experiencing the fact that the line between luxury and necessity does not universally fall in the same place with regards to balanced nutrition, functioning toilets, and temperature regulation, to name a few. Here, the fact that I can casually dispose of a few thousand francs CFA (the exchange rate is about 500 to $1) flings me far into the lap of luxury. And the cab drivers know it. The vendors know it. Exasperating though it is to discover that it is not my natural inclination to sacrifice the power of my cash card for the sake of an “authentic” experience, it is perhaps even more frustrating to realize that no one is going to treat me as though I belong here anyways.
I know I mentioned previously the emotional implications of being a member of a tiny racial minority, but, at this point, I actually don’t think that it’s the physical fact of it that I notice or mind – it’s the fact that most of my interactions are so obviously tinged with my skin tone. Within two minutes of entering the Marché Sandaga with three other tubaab girls, we had acquired a self-styled guide begging us to come see his shop and/or factory, which happened to be located approximately in whatever direction we were going even after we tried to dissuade him with a 180 degree turn. Doing our best to ignore him as he followed us – which he continued to do for the entire time that we were in the market, over an hour, deterring other would-be guides and offering a constant stream of commentary and compliments – we tried to look through the vast array of merchandise precariously crammed into stalls in the street. The vendors, however, were ridiculously aggressive. Every time we stopped we were swarmed with people, which I took with what I’d like to think was reasonably good humor until one man actually started touching me, at which point I may have broken several social conventions by hitting his hand hard enough to, I hoped at the time, hurt just a bit. The men at the stalls shoved articles into our hands the moment we paused to look at something in their area, providing a constant steam of praise for their wares and assurances that they would give us a good price. Our skin, however, is the tip-off that they can probably rip us off ridiculously, though I will add here the qualification that a rip-off here is still often a fairly good deal by U.S. standards. The taxis all want our patronage because they know that they can probably offer a triple fare and get away with it, and they’re none too pleased when I try to insist on a price that I know from locals is a standard one. I’ve been told that I should absolutely never pay more than 2000 francs for a ten minute ride – the approximate equivalent of $4, which is about how much it costs just to get in a taxi in DC. The public transit comes in the form of a car rapide, a sort of glorified van with bus-esque seating that looks like it should fit about ten but crams in twenty, and sitting at that – I honestly have no idea how it was physically possible for the passengers smashed onto the bench Sunday to offer me a space large enough for my hips. “Alxamdulilaay” splashes across the colorful exterior, and it does indeed seem like a small miracle, and, in this case, one that costs between 20 and 30 cents, so long as you don’t mind the fact that there are no defined schedules or stops and banging hard on the side of the vehicle is the preferred method of letting the apprenti know you’d like to get on or off.
It’s a bit of a whirlwind, not dissimilar to the Senegalese approach to money in general – yes, ladies and gentlemen, as I’m sure you’ve already gathered, we’re toppling off last week’s subject of divinity into a discussion about money. It’s true that people aren’t always willing or able to buy things that I consider critical, such as water or ventilation. It’s also true, though, that I’ve rarely seen such generosity, fiscal and otherwise, as I’ve experienced here. Though – “generosity” isn’t quite the right word. It looks like generosity through my cultural lens, but I’m starting to get the sense that it’s really a very decreased sense of personal ownership of physical items (or, for that matter, psychological or emotional states, but that’s on my sticky-note list of topics for upcoming blog posts – we’re keeping things at their most shallow today). Every time I thank Aziz for something, he replies, almost surprised, with “on est ensemble.” “We are together.” We are a unit, a family. Why would you thank me for something that is ours? Out at a restaurant with some Senegalese peers, I was disoriented to forgo my usual ritual of tallying exactly how much each person owes, down the pennies for tax and tip. Instead, the strategy seemed to be for everyone to throw in some cash and then hope that it comes out to be enough for the bill. People lend or simply give money to each other, and it’s culturally valued to not make a big deal about it. There’s always enough food at mealtime to ensure that any distantly associated person who walks into the house can sit down and eat their fill. It’s not so much a system of purchases as it is a system of gifts, with each giving what they can, where “ours” is more prevalent than “mine,” and it’s alternately awed me with the unflinching network of mutual support and raised every hackle on my capitalist neck. There can be huge problems here with family members hanging off of one another. If one person is so lucky as to get a lucrative job, he or she is expected to support every last second cousin who implies they’re in need, and there are few greater social betrayals than to refuse to do so, or even to do so in any way but quietly. Clearly, this is not a system designed to provide individuals with material benefits proportionate to their labor, and, clearly, this creates problems with regards to incentives, which in turn retards wealth creation. Begging is a well-developed industry. Out the window of a taxi one day, my yaay extended a 200 franc coin to the ragged child who had approached the vehicle and demanded change for 100, which was provided by the time the traffic subsided enough for us to drive away. The state is right now starting to try to crack down – evidently ineffectively as of yet, based on the fact that I see the frail children and occasionally adults on my way to school almost daily. There’s the famous problem of the abuse of the Koranic school system, where young boys sent to learn religion are instead set by their so-called teachers to holding bowls on the streets to cash in on religiously mandated obligations to support the schools and the poor.
And, yet, here I am in my own mental system, with my personal computer and phone and clothes and cash, inclined on instinct to jealously guard my exclusive right to use those things. But… who purchased that computer? My parents, actually. My parents, who have university and graduate degrees that allow them to make enough money to buy their daughter a computer for college – and to send her to college to get the degree that will theoretically allow me to continue to buy things for myself or any close personal dependents I might acquire. Yes, they worked hard. Yes, I work hard. But it would be ridiculous to deny that it took a good deal of good fortune to get me to my present position bemoaning dysfunctional showerheads. By what right, then, do I own that computer? And I’m not saying that I’m ready to abandon property rights – not even close. I’m just zooming out a bit from the framework in which I’ve always thought of property, even as I’m realizing that the property I possess sets me far apart from this world I’m trying to inhabit.
It’s disorienting to see the way I am defined become more and more superficial. If you asked me, at Georgetown, who I was, I would not have responded with “economically privileged” or “white.” Here, that’s what every local but the few who I know personally see when they look at me – and the fact is that, whether or not this is always accurate, the two descriptors go inexorably together in the popular consciousness. The fact is, too, that neither of those are qualities that I can very easily shed. Study abroad is supposed to temper your inner personality, make you into a more thoughtful, knowledgeable, and global human being, teach you to see things beyond the surface of a strange culture or different people. Maybe it’s because I hold those goals for my own experience that it’s so dizzying to come here and see just how much the surface really matters. I’ve been taught to idealize a world in which neither race nor class count for much. It would be an exaggeration to say that, here, my race and class count for everything – but they absolutely draw lines around my world and the way I interact with this one.

Sunday, my host cousin took me to see the Statue de la Renaissance, which has towered over the Ouakam neighborhood of Dakar as of this past April. A massive man, woman, and child strain towards the sky, rising above dusty, half-finished buildings. The inscription on it, set there by representatives of nineteen West African nations, urges young Africans to remember the sacrifices of those who made it possible for the content to rise into the global future.

It was controversial, my guide said, using public funds to construct a vastly expensive monument to the idea of economic power when the nearest houses had just sustained too much water damage to be inhabited and neither their occupants nor the city could pay to restore the shelter. He said he thought it was worth it. I don’t know.
I do know, though, that when I got back to the house that night to Aziz’ casual greeting, to the flurry of “ça va?”s, to my yaay’s expressive smile, I felt, for a few brief moments, like I belonged, as much as that unwieldy statue claims to belong here in Dakar. Sure, their conversations in Wolof are still mostly composed of nonsense syllables as far as I’m concerned, but there’s a lot of communication to be found just in the motion of nudging a particularly nice morsel into someone else’s vicinity on the communal plate. In the house, in the community, “on est ensemble” – even if I can’t manage being inconspicuous much better than the statue can.